E-learning platform: developing an evaluation strategy in a real case

The ACTIVE project funded by the EU Commission aimed at improving the possibility for disabled people to become more active citizens through the use of suitable educational technologies. Very often disabled people have fewer opportunities than other citizens to take part in open distance learning and also have worse access to computer equipment. This is a threat to their active citizenship, since Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has an ever greater role in today's society. The specific goal of the project was to investigate how people with learning disabilities could get, keep and develop their contacts with society through distance education. The target group of the ACTIVE project was composed of people affected by aphasia (aphasia is a loss or impairment of the ability to produce or comprehend language, due to brain damage). In this paper, we show and discuss the strategy that led us to select the constructivist pedagogical methodology and to implement it by means of a problem solving and game oriented approach for the design and implementation of learning contents within the ACTIVE framework. We also show how the same approach can be used for selecting e-learning platforms to utilize so as to guarantee, in the case of this particular target group, the key benefits of e-learning